Millions Of Californians Could Qualify For Tax Subsidy Under Affordable Care Act

SAN JOSE (KCBS) — A new report finds that nearly two million people in California could qualify for tax subsidies under the new Affordable Care Act. The study comes as the federal insurance website faces a new round of criticism on the Capitol Hill Tuesday.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 1.9 million people could qualify for tax subsidies under the healthcare law. Nationwide, their report found that nearly 17 million people could be eligible for subsidies.

Meanwhile, the Senate health and education committee held a hearing on Tuesday morning on the glitch-plagued rollout of the federal health insurance website.

Man Set On Fire Aboard AC Transit Bus In Oakland

Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) told KCBS that there should have been a soft rollout of healthcare.gov. Problems would have been anticipated and there wouldn’t have been the high expectation that this was going operate so smoothly at the outset.

“We probably didn’t have the brightest minds on the planet working on it to begin with and that’s why the surge of Silicon Valley has taken place and we have a lot of great minds working on the site now. So that is not going to be an issue in the next few weeks. I’m very confident,” Speier said.

Both Google and Oracle have sent computer engineers to help fix the website which combines over 167 health programs across the country.

(Copyright 2013 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

KCBS's Matt Bigler started as a reporter/anchor in 2004, and is now based in San Jose working out of the Silicon Valley Bureau. Matt co-anchors the 5:00am hour with Susan Leigh Taylor in San Francisco, and can also be seen on TV most mornings...